shines in the dark
by ncfan
Summary: Eärendil, the day before she leaves on the first of her journeys to find Aman. AU.


This was written for Femslash Friday at AO3 (To be published there on Friday). The fic contains non-explicit sexual content, and a genderbent Eärendil. If these things do not float your boat, I'm just warning you now.

I own nothing.

* * *

Elwing was up and gasping, at the window and clutching the sill. Eärendil was at her side in a heartbeat, brushing thick locks of curly black hair away from Elwing's damp face and staring worriedly at her beloved's reflection in the window.

"I dreamt… I dreamt that we had children," Elwing stammered, throat fluttering, pale skin made only more pallid by the wan moonlight. "Two little boys who danced about like wraiths or spirits. I…" Her voice was as brittle as glass threatening to break, no, already cracking and breaking. Elwing turned her eyes on Eärendil, and Eärendil winced, to recognize the entirely too familiar feverish light within. "…It seemed more real than the waking world," Elwing said quietly, swallowing hard.

"But you know that it is not true," Eärendil replied as gently as she could manage, catching sight of her haggard reflection in the window and trying not to feel too bitter. They had had so many dreams, once. "Dreams… Dreams are not reality."

"No." Elwing did not bother to mask her bitterness. "They are not."

They stood in the dark, in the silence, hearing nothing but the other's breathing and the beating of their own hearts. Eärendil put her hands on Elwing's slight shoulders, trying to ignore how they shook. Lit only by faint moonlight, Elwing's face appeared skull-like. Eärendil's looked no better, but she didn't like reminders of how frail Elwing was, not when—

Elwing slipped away from the window, out from under Eärendil's hands. She ran a small hand through her disheveled hair, then over her throat, fingernails clawing at the skin. For a long moment, Elwing's gaze settled upon a box sitting on a table, whose contents radiated thin streams of light through the cracks when left uncovered. Even when it was covered with cloth, as it was now, it exuded light with a faint, blue-white glow.

At last, Elwing shook her head as though deciding against something (Eärendil suspected she knew what), and wearily clambered back into bed. Just as wearily, Eärendil followed.

-0-0-0-

The light of the Silmaril haunted Eärendil. She looked at it and saw the splendor of Gondolin undimmed, as though the place where she was born was still standing and more than just a memory sung of in sad songs. She looked at it and saw the untarnished grandeur of Menegroth, the way she liked to imagine it had been before it was ruined, first by the Naugrim and then by the Kinslayers. She looked at it and saw the glory of the Undying Lands in its Noontide, the glory of Laurelin and Telperion, that which no Man had ever seen or would see, and no Elf would ever see again. Eärendil knew what she was looking for, but even if she found the Undying Lands, she would never find _that_.

So when Elwing wore the Silmaril, Eärendil avoided her. The young Sindarin queen never looked more lovely, more regal, than she did when she wore the Silmaril around her neck, but Eärendil could not bear to look at her. Her skin lit up like a candle flame and if Eärendil stared at her hard enough, she would swear that she was able to see straight through Elwing to the back of the chair she sat in. The sight terrified her, but nothing Eärendil said or did was ever enough to induce Elwing to put it away for good.

Eärendil fled the presence chamber where the Iathrim held court when Elwing wore the Silmaril. She fled to the docks, something Elwing liked no better than Eärendil liked her wearing the Silmaril openly. The quays of the Havens of Sirion were Eärendil's refuge: there, she forgot all loneliness and frustration, or at least she could try. But very soon, the time would come when she would leave, and she did not know if or when she would return.

"You are ready to leave then, Lady Eärendil?"

It was strange, at times, to watch Egalmoth walk with his left hand constantly resting upon his hip. Eärendil knew why he did this; he was still used to walking with his hand braced on the hilt of his sword, as he had done during the early years for the Exiles around Lake Mithrim, and much later during the Gondolindrim's wanderings. There were many among Eärendil's people who did this. But one of the Iathrim's conditions for allowing the Gondolindrim to dwell in Sirion was that they were not permitted to bear arms except during times of great need. The second sack of Menegroth was less than a decade past when the Gondolindrim came to the Havens. None of the Doriathrin refugees had forgotten what had happened to them on account of the Noldor.

Egalmoth had never expressed any bitterness over being stripped of his right to bear arms, not that Eärendil had noticed. Eärendil thought that _she_ would have been bitter; as it was, she did not even know how to handle a sword, something that had caused her parents no end of frustration and worry. Her parents… Eärendil blinked furiously and stared straight ahead.

"Yes, I am," she replied, in a voice that sounded clearer than her mind. "We leave tomorrow morning."

His forehead creased, that familiar concerned expression coming over his face. "Lady, I must remind you of the risks of making such a voyage. The ban—"

"I know that," Eärendil interjected, shaking her head. "I know the risks, Egalmoth. But we need _help_, and I can think of no one else who can aid us against the Enemy any longer."

Egalmoth's shoulders sagged, and Eärendil felt a pang, despite herself. She knew that he considered this folly, that he feared for her life if she made the attempt, and that he had been attempting to dissuade her from trying to find the Undying Lands for months now. That firm response of hers had probably been the last thing he had wanted to hear. "Then… Then I wish you good luck, Eärendil; I suppose there's a reason your father named you the way he did," he remarked with a rueful laugh. "And… I hope that I will see you return to these shores, one day."

Eärendil could not smile reassuringly at him. She could not assure him that she would return. "I'll try." That was all she could say.

It had to be done.

-0-0-0-

Come nightfall, when the sky was dark and the city was quiet, Elwing had appeared outside of Eärendil's bedchamber door and asked her to come sleep with her again tonight.

They could never be married. They could never live together openly. Perhaps if Elwing had not been the Sindar's queen, perhaps if Eärendil had not been a scion of the royal line of Gondolin, but everyone they trusted not to stand in judgment of them said that they could not wed. Their status as 'unmarried' was a valuable asset to them in the interest of possibly making alliances later. Eärendil sometimes bitterly wondered if, had she been born the _son_ of Idril Celebrindal, they would have been encouraging her to openly wed Elwing Queen of the Sindar, instead of keeping what they had behind close doors. But that was something that could never be, just a dream, so she tried not to think about it.

And making love was not supposed to be like this, Eärendil was sure of that. She wasn't exactly sure what it _was_ supposed to be like, mind you. She and Elwing may have been adults in body, able to reason like them as well, but in the eyes of the Elves they were half-grown at the oldest, young children at the youngest, and no one had ever seen fit to educate them. So they had to guess.

They were both clumsy and gauche, even Elwing with her slender hands. They were both thin and bony, something Eärendil tried to ignore in Elwing just as much as Eärendil tried to ignore the reflection of it in Elwing's eyes. The box on the table radiated blue-white light through the cracks, and it made Elwing's naked body look like a corpse. She tried to ignore that, too.

"You will come back?" Elwing's quicksilver eyes gleamed like twin pinpoints of light, like the stars that Eärendil had used to navigate by when she had learned to sail. "Please." Her voice cracked. "I love you so much; please say that you'll come back."

"I will. Any way that I can, I will," and it only felt like half of a lie, to say that instead of promising that she would try. "Even if I can only come back as some distant star," Eärendil said with a choked laugh, and laid down besides Elwing in the dark.


End file.
